Going into business for yourself and becoming an entrepreneur can be a very daunting, yet exciting experience for those that choose to pursue it. I am passionate about going into business and I would advise everyone to go into this journey for themselves. My foundation is all about educating young people about how to go into business and how they can add value to the world while making a profit. Before you start your journey, here are 7 fundamentals you should consider before owning a business.
1. Build A Business That Others Will Love
If you do what you love, then you will be the hardest working person in the room. If you build a business doing what you love, you will work harder than anyone else. I personally want people to think about not only going into business providing a product or service that they love but think about having a product or service that the customer loves as well. You need to provide something that more customers will want to buy or need. Additionally, you should be looking to fall in love with business. Learn to love all aspects of your business including marketing, sales, customer service and training a team. This will help you learn how to become a better business owner, not just offering a product or service.
2. Learn Every Aspect of Your Business
The second point is that you must learn and gain an understanding of every aspect of your business. This necessarily doesn’t mean that we must be a marketing genius, however it is important for us to know enough about marketing to hire a marketing genius. We should learn enough about sales so that when hiring a salesperson, we can ask them the pertinent questions. Make it a goal to become good at every area of our business so that we can mostly efficiently coach, mentor, and lead our employees.
3. Get Better At Being An Business Owner
Something you have to accept is the fact that the challenges in life and in your business will never get easier. You’ve have got to get better at your craft. You should constantly be looking to learn and using your knowledge to improve and grow alongside your business. As you grow to become a better leader, the more you can grow your employees on your team. A good tip to remember is that is “First you build yourself then you can build you people. After you build your people, they are the ones that help build your business.”
4. Learn The Process of Buying Customers
When running a operation, you need to learn the process of buying customers. Many newer businesses invest too little into or completely ignore marketing. If you want more customers to actively show up to your business, you must start investing more into marketing. If you invest $1000 on an advertising campaign and gain 10 new customers, then you essentially “bought” those new customers for $100 each. You are going to need to invest time, money or someone else’s time when buying new customers. The more customers you want, the more you must buy. You need to be able to actively determine how many customers should you be buying on the average week. If you need more help generating leads with this check out my book “Instant Leads“.
5. Do Your Research
Prior to starting your organization, it is only in your best interest to do your research beforehand. I see so many people starting a business only with having an initial idea, but not putting any effort into doing further research. For example, if you are planning to open a coffee shop, some questions you need to start answering with research are: “How many coffee shops are there are within a five-mile radius of your location?”, “What products will your store offer?” or “What’s the average price of coffee in your competitor’s shops? “Before you invest your money into your business, do your market research to see profitability potential of your idea.
6. Creating A Plan
If you are looking to open a business, you are going to have to create a business plan. Typically, anything you are looking you investing time and money into you want to have a plan for it or you will end up wasting more resources than necessary. Although you should write your business plan down, the focus isn’t about creating a written document. Instead, the most important aspect about a business plan is the time and energy you are investing into thinking about it. There are many things you need to thoroughly think about. Some examples of things to think about how many people you will hire, how many sales are needed per day to make a profit, or what will be your marketing strategy. Take a few hours to create a solid plan to follow for when you start your business to better prepare yourself for success.
7. Double Your Expectations
Lastly, your business is going to cost twice as much and take twice as long as you expect it to. It does for just one main reason; it is your first experience. The reason why your first business is the hardest is because you are learning along the way. Similarly, like how making your first million is the hardest, but the second million after that is easy because you know what to do and you know what to expect. The same applies to your business, but it will become much easier along the way.
Entrepreneurship can be intimidating without the necessary preparation or research. If you want to learn more about the best ways to prepare into getting into business for yourself, my 30X Business program give you the preparation to best set up your new company for success.